Lest we forget

Lower Fifth
Battlefields trip

Lower Fifth pupils visited the First World War battlefields
in France and Belgium last week and paid their respects at the grave of a
former Head Boy.

Lieutenant Richard Stirling was killed by a sniper on 21
August 1915 near Sanctuary Wood in Belgium. Born in Guildford, he joined Exeter
School as a boarder in 1902 and finished as Head Boy in 1911. A keen sportsman,
he was a key player in both the 1st XI cricket and 1st XV rugby teams.

Exeter School’s magazine The Exonian records: “His bright,
happy disposition made him a favourite with all who knew him, and there will be
very many to whom his death will be a real loss”. A fellow officer wrote to the Headmaster:
“Dick was killed this afternoon at 4.30pm. He was observing the enemy trenches
through his field-glasses, and was sniped through the head. He died
instantaneously, never knowing what hit him, without pain and without a
sound.”

An army chaplain wrote to his parents: “I was able to take
the burial service over your boy’s grave, a little way behind the trenches, two
nights ago. There were many of his
brother officers present, and several men of his platoon, and it has been very
evident how much he has won the admiration and affection of those with whom he
served. The grave is in an open space in
what we call Sanctuary Wood. The service
took place at 11pm in the moonlight, with the bullets from the German snipers
whistling through the trees.”

After visiting some preserved trenches nearby, 102 Exeter
School pupils gathered around the grave to hear Richard’s story, and Isabel
Trelawny and Alex James laid poppies on behalf of the school.

Richard is remembered at school on the war memorial in the
chapel, among 72 other Old Exonians killed in the 1st World War, and on a board
listing Head Boys in Butterfield Hall.

Head of History, Giles Trelawny, led Lower Fifth pupils on
the annual four-day trip to the Western Front battlefields, visiting trenches
in Flanders, mine craters and battlefields on the Somme, tunnels at Arras and
the Passchendaele Museum.

Several pupils were able to visit the graves or memorials of
relatives, and the trip finished with a Service of Remembrance led by the
school Chaplain, Reverend Tom Carson, at a cemetery on the Somme where Megan
Rhodes was able to visit her great-great uncle, Private Richard Rodgers of the
Devonshire Regiment, for the first time.

The pupils also got the opportunity to try on British First
World War uniform, to handle rifles, grenades, shrapnel and shell splinters and
to reflect on what it was like to experience this war.